Paper-plane Use Wing And Prayer

HAMPTON — They didn't break the world record for keeping a paper airplane aloft - it's 16.89 seconds, according to Guinness - but they certainly tried.

Children at an annual paper-airplane contest Saturday at Coliseum Mall did whatever they could to fly their hand-folded crafts the longest and the farthest.

They stapled them and taped them and paper-clipped them every which way. They folded them lengthwise and sideways and they cut what they called "air lifters" and "wind breakers" into them.

"This stays up in the air maybe a minute," said 11-year-old Johnathan Utecht, a Poquoson fifth-grader apparently unaware that his estimate would nearly quadruple the standing record. "It's got flaps and wind breakers. They slow it down and keep it up."

About 90 children came out to compete in a contest sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' Hampton Roads chapter in honor of Engineers Week.

"We want to get kids thinking about growing up to be engineers," said Dana Dunham, an organizer who works at NASA Langley Research Center.

Children in three age groups competed in two categories: endurance and distance. The first means keeping the plane up in the air as long as possible, and the second means landing it as close as possible to a masking-tape "X" on the floor.

Utecht's plane was square and squat - built for endurance. His friend Jonathan Moore's was built for speed.

Jonathan, also 11 and a fifth-grader from Poquoson, folded his airplane long and sleek - on the sponsor's regulation pink paper airplane paper, of course - to help him in the day's distance competition.

"I tried it out in my class yesterday, and it worked OK," he said.

Prizes were awarded for the top three combined scores in each age group. Two additional awards went out to the highest single endurance score and the highest distance score.

Prizes included balsa wood plane kits and foam airplanes for the younger children, and even a how-to book about paper airplanes.

"A lot of these kids have the books and have been practicing at home," Dunham said. "It's a serious hobby.

"Most of these kids know about as much about making a paper airplane as the adults," she said, though she admitted to giving the kids a few pointers as they created their airplanes.

Few of the children probably know as much as Frank Quinto, another NASA Langley engineer who, in between spurts of judging, worked on his own launching technique with a personal creation.

"The secret is to have a thick wing," Quinto confided as he played with his own paper airplane. "What you want to do is launch it into the air and then let it glide down to the ground."